Fix Falkreath Hold Final Boss Already!

Takuto

I spent 26 hours (over the course of 7 runs) on this last boss before completing. More accurately, I spent 24-25 hours wiping on a the final boss at between 13% and 0.5% health. During those runs i played on different characters -- a healer, a tank, and a DPSer. On my only completion of this horrible place, one other member of my group had been with me for the all 7 miserable runs, and the remaining 2 had each spent more than 10 hours suffering with me during previous runs.

The reason why comes down strictly to the way the boss functions for the last 20% of the fight on a low dps group. Guides and walk-throughs on this fight seem to have been written by high dps players who don't fully understand the mechanics in the final two phases of the fight -- because they don't see them. I'm in a guild which spends about 80% of its time PvPing, and though we all have alternate characters for PvE (as for some reason ZOS has decided to make PvP and PvE builds mutually exclusive), no one in the guild mains a PvE character, and no one can even scratch 30k dps in the most perfect of situations -- and most have to struggle pretty hard to hit the low 20s.

Having trouble with the mechanics? Try it with 12 or 16 atronachs spread out around the room to preventing you from moving around, obscuring the view of telegraphs, CCing you and wasting stamina to prevent you from reacting to the mechanics, and constantly getting their oversized bodies in the way and preventing the tank from taunting the boss. We had over a dozens runs that ended with everyone dead but the tank -- the boss with less than 50k health, but so many damn atronachs in the room that there was no chance of recovering. Our closest failure had the final boss at 3.4k health before the last-man-standing tank ran out of stamina and died with *only* 8 atronachs up at the time. Rage inducing? -- yeah.

For those of you who don't know, under 20% the boss summons atronachs endlessly - to a seemingly unlimited number based on a timer, under 10% he destroys pillars endlessly also based on a timer. This is why hard-mode is supposed to be harder with 2 less pillars -- if you ran the dungeon with two top tier DPSers you didn't notice this though, as the timer never ran down.

code65536

Takuto wrote: »

I spent 26 hours (over the course of 7 runs) on this last boss before completing. More accurately, I spent 24-25 hours wiping on a the final boss at between 13% and 0.5% health. During those runs i played on different characters -- a healer, a tank, and a DPSer. On my only completion of this horrible place, one other member of my group had been with me for the all 7 miserable runs, and the remaining 2 had each spent more than 10 hours suffering with me during previous runs.

The reason why comes down strictly to the way the boss functions for the last 20% of the fight on a low dps group. Guides and walk-throughs on this fight seem to have been written by high dps players who don't fully understand the mechanics in the final two phases of the fight -- because they don't see them. I'm in a guild which spends about 80% of its time PvPing, and though we all have alternate characters for PvE (as for some reason ZOS has decided to make PvP and PvE builds mutually exclusive), no one in the guild mains a PvE character, and no one can even scratch 30k dps in the most perfect of situations -- and most have to struggle pretty hard to hit the low 20s.

Having trouble with the mechanics? Try it with 12 or 16 atronachs spread out around the room to preventing you from moving around, obscuring the view of telegraphs, CCing you and wasting stamina to prevent you from reacting to the mechanics, and constantly getting their oversized bodies in the way and preventing the tank from taunting the boss. We had over a dozens runs that ended with everyone dead but the tank -- the boss with less than 50k health, but so many damn atronachs in the room that there was no chance of recovering. Our closest failure had the final boss at 3.4k health before the last-man-standing tank ran out of stamina and died with *only* 8 atronachs up at the time. Rage inducing? -- yeah.

For those of you who don't know, under 20% the boss summons atronachs endlessly - to a seemingly unlimited number based on a timer, under 10% he destroys pillars endlessly also based on a timer. This is why hard-mode is supposed to be harder with 2 less pillars -- if you ran the dungeon with two top tier DPSers you didn't notice this though, as the timer never ran down.

But the same could be said of many other vet dungeons. If you can't get the execute-phase adds under control in Falkreath, HM there is no way you can beat Mazzatun HM or Bloodroot HM, both of which have even stronger DPS checks, and you'll likely find yourself out of platforms on CoA2 HM.

What I would suggest is to save AoE ultimates for the final push, have the tank hold the adds next to the boss, DPS tab-target the boss, drop ultimates, lay down your ground effects, and then focus the boss down while the AoE cleave from your ultimates and ground effects kill the adds.

Takuto

code65536 wrote: »

But the same could be said of many other vet dungeons. If you can't get the execute-phase adds under control in Falkreath, HM there is no way you can beat Mazzatun HM or Bloodroot HM, both of which have even stronger DPS checks, and you'll likely find yourself out of platforms on CoA2 HM.

What I would suggest is to save AoE ultimates for the final push, have the tank hold the adds next to the boss, DPS tab-target the boss, drop ultimates, lay down your ground effects, and then focus the boss down while the AoE cleave from your ultimates and ground effects kill the adds.

There is a difference between a DPS check and a mechanic which isn't well designed for high DPS and thus becomes much easier when you out-pace the expected DPS by 3 or 4 fold.

At one time all the vet dungeons had a DPS check somewhere early on in the dungeon. It was generally a boss which either healed itself or had a mechanic which made the boss harder as the fight went on. This was so that a low-dps group would have a very clear sign that their DPS wasn't sufficient for the dungeon and would turn back. A good example of this was bloodspawn in his original incarnation, he would slowly destroy the room until your entire group was trapped in melee range, and every time he ground-pounded he would do so for a longer duration, until eventually he just ground-pounded damage until you group ran out of magicka for healing and died.

The current way dungeons are designed (or have been re-designed), these checks have been removed. In cases like Mazzatun and Falkreath you can work through the mechanics for the entire dungeon on extremely low DPS, right up until the execute phase on the final boss.

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

code65536

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

Takuto

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

You are a bit caught up on semantics. I thought it would be clear with my explanation that I was referring to a DPS check as an early dungeon boss or mechanic intended to prevent players from wasting their time on content which they can not complete at their current level. A gatekeeper if you will.

code65536

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

You are a bit caught up on semantics. I thought it would be clear with my explanation that I was referring to a DPS check as an early dungeon boss or mechanic intended to prevent players from wasting their time on content which they can not complete at their current level. A gatekeeper if you will.

That doesn't make it a "poorly-designed mechanic".

So... your issue is in where they place the DPS check. You want it to be a gatekeeper, so that people can fail it early and not "waste" their time with the rest of the dungeon. That's a fair point. But the counter is that it's discouraging if people fail early on (though I guess that discouragement is what you want), and that placing the most difficult content last has the best sense of difficulty progression. I mean, it's natural to expect the last few minutes of a fight to be the most difficult and climatic--that's how it is in a lot of games (and movies ). Back when CoA2 (er, vCoA, as it was called back then) first came out, the Fire Maw was the gatekeeper boss, and people would say, "Once you beat the Fire Maw, you've beaten vCoA". That's not very good difficult progression design, IMO.

Better to have people fail at the last 1% of the entire dungeon than to have them fail at the first or second boss. It's the final part of the final boss. It's supposed to be--and people expect it to be--a difficult challenge to overcome.

Takuto

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

You are a bit caught up on semantics. I thought it would be clear with my explanation that I was referring to a DPS check as an early dungeon boss or mechanic intended to prevent players from wasting their time on content which they can not complete at their current level. A gatekeeper if you will.

That doesn't make it a "poorly-designed mechanic".

So... your issue is in where they place the DPS check. You want it to be a gatekeeper, so that people can fail it early and not "waste" their time with the rest of the dungeon. That's a fair point. But the counter is that it's discouraging if people fail early on (though I guess that discouragement is what you want), and that placing the most difficult content last has the best sense of difficulty progression. I mean, it's natural to expect the last few minutes of a fight to be the most difficult and climatic--that's how it is in a lot of games (and movies ). Back when CoA2 (er, vCoA, as it was called back then) first came out, the Fire Maw was the gatekeeper boss, and people would say, "Once you beat the Fire Maw, you've beaten vCoA". That's not very good difficult progression design, IMO.

Better to have people fail at the last 1% of the entire dungeon than to have them fail at the first or second boss. It's the final part of the final boss. It's supposed to be--and people expect it to be--a difficult challenge to overcome.

The gate keeper boss on CoA2 when it was new was "Urata the Legion" not Fire Maw. Urata was the second boss in the dungeon and had a mechanic which would heal her if your DPS was too low. If you are unfamiliar with the mechanic, it is the same as the first boss in VMA, which is that it summons adds and then absorbs them to heal. Urata to that extent was one of the best bosses of this type, as having a boss that is sitting at 100% health after 5 minutes of DPS makes it very clear to the group what the problem is.

As for Fire Maw, there were two ways of cheesing that boss as I remember. Most people I knew considered the ash titan to be the hardest boss in the dungeon. Though the groups I was in usually had a harder time on the final boss. I suspect this was due to the fact that as a PvP guild we were all vampires, which back then meant 50% more damage from fire.

Most of your argument seems to rely on 1) there being some sort of entertainment value to sitting in a dungeon redoing the same fight over and over again, and/or 2) a climax which is skipped entirely has an equal entertainment value. Your perspective certainly is interesting, I wasn't feeling any excitement about the fight 2 dozen hours in and I'm not sure the group posted in the video that skipped the mechanic entirely due to having an absurd amount of group dps felt like the fight had become 'climatic'.

Assuming you are being honest in that you felt that this mechanic in particular was an important climax to the fight. It seems that logically there exists some narrow band of DPS where you both get some sort of excitement out of this mechanic without making the fight impossible. I can only assume that this narrow band just happens to be the level you play at.

My problem with the mechanic is that it doesn't even activate for the players who are most likely to find some entertainment value in the difficulty. Those who were already struggling get doubled down on, seeing the difficultly level spike to levels that the supposed elites never see. It is as if high dps somehow translates into an 'easy mode' button, but why? I can only assume that someone at ZOS didn't actually think it through, hence my 'poorly designed' comment. If ZOS truly intends the answer to this fight to be 'more dps', then they need to add a gatekeeper early in the dungeon to indicate to players the minimum amount of DPS their group needs. If instead they intend the dungeon to be completable in the way my group did -- swamped in chaos and frustrated, then they should probably give the top-end players the same -- entertainment.

paulsimonps

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

You are a bit caught up on semantics. I thought it would be clear with my explanation that I was referring to a DPS check as an early dungeon boss or mechanic intended to prevent players from wasting their time on content which they can not complete at their current level. A gatekeeper if you will.

That doesn't make it a "poorly-designed mechanic".

So... your issue is in where they place the DPS check. You want it to be a gatekeeper, so that people can fail it early and not "waste" their time with the rest of the dungeon. That's a fair point. But the counter is that it's discouraging if people fail early on (though I guess that discouragement is what you want), and that placing the most difficult content last has the best sense of difficulty progression. I mean, it's natural to expect the last few minutes of a fight to be the most difficult and climatic--that's how it is in a lot of games (and movies ). Back when CoA2 (er, vCoA, as it was called back then) first came out, the Fire Maw was the gatekeeper boss, and people would say, "Once you beat the Fire Maw, you've beaten vCoA". That's not very good difficult progression design, IMO.

Better to have people fail at the last 1% of the entire dungeon than to have them fail at the first or second boss. It's the final part of the final boss. It's supposed to be--and people expect it to be--a difficult challenge to overcome.

The gate keeper boss on CoA2 when it was new was "Urata the Legion" not Fire Maw. Urata was the second boss in the dungeon and had a mechanic which would heal her if your DPS was too low. If you are unfamiliar with the mechanic, it is the same as the first boss in VMA, which is that it summons adds and then absorbs them to heal. Urata to that extent was one of the best bosses of this type, as having a boss that is sitting at 100% health after 5 minutes of DPS makes it very clear to the group what the problem is.

As for Fire Maw, there were two ways of cheesing that boss as I remember. Most people I knew considered the ash titan to be the hardest boss in the dungeon. Though the groups I was in usually had a harder time on the final boss. I suspect this was due to the fact that as a PvP guild we were all vampires, which back then meant 50% more damage from fire.

Most of your argument seems to rely on 1) there being some sort of entertainment value to sitting in a dungeon redoing the same fight over and over again, and/or 2) a climax which is skipped entirely has an equal entertainment value. Your perspective certainly is interesting, I wasn't feeling any excitement about the fight 2 dozen hours in and I'm not sure the group posted in the video that skipped the mechanic entirely due to having an absurd amount of group dps felt like the fight had become 'climatic'.

Assuming you are being honest in that you felt that this mechanic in particular was an important climax to the fight. It seems that logically there exists some narrow band of DPS where you both get some sort of excitement out of this mechanic without making the fight impossible. I can only assume that this narrow band just happens to be the level you play at.

My problem with the mechanic is that it doesn't even activate for the players who are most likely to find some entertainment value in the difficulty. Those who were already struggling get doubled down on, seeing the difficultly level spike to levels that the supposed elites never see. It is as if high dps somehow translates into an 'easy mode' button, but why? I can only assume that someone at ZOS didn't actually think it through, hence my 'poorly designed' comment. If ZOS truly intends the answer to this fight to be 'more dps', then they need to add a gatekeeper early in the dungeon to indicate to players the minimum amount of DPS their group needs. If instead they intend the dungeon to be completable in the way my group did -- swamped in chaos and frustrated, then they should probably give the top-end players the same -- entertainment.

Wait was that legit a thing back then? That people couldn't get past the 2nd boss?



I didn't know for the longest time that her adds would heal her cause they died almost instantly.

code65536

Takuto wrote: »

My problem with the mechanic is that it doesn't even activate for the players who are most likely to find some entertainment value in the difficulty.

In execute phase, the boss is no longer immune when adds are summoned. This is clearly visible with any group. Adds are summoned based on time, not health percent. This is visible with any group. He gains a semi-permeable shield that slows down DPS against him. This is visible with any group. His shouts are time-based rather than health percent. Yes, it's true that if things go perfectly, we never see a time-based shout, but things don't always go well; sometimes a DPS dies and the time lost to recovery means we see another shout or two. But seeing as how the time-based shouts are designed to wipe the group, you're not supposed to see the mechanic nor do you want to see it--you just know in the back of the head that it's there, and you're racing so that you don't see it.

Takuto

paulsimonps wrote: »

Wait was that legit a thing back then? That people couldn't get past the 2nd boss?

I didn't know for the longest time that her adds would heal her cause they died almost instantly.

I'd place her level of difficulty at the time about at the level of vet-hm direfrost final boss. Almost no risk of dying, but healing that made it pretty much impossible for a low-dps pug.

Sigtric

SquareSausage wrote: »

Has anyone in this thread done no death?

I really hate this fight too, its ruined our no death everytime.
just like in RoM aswell, they just try and pack all these really *** mechanics back to back and one slightmistake can not be recovered from, and its start again.

that fight imo should be considered HM even with all pillars up, making less pillars doesnt really make it harder, the actual fight itself is just too much.

Re: bolded - yes

It's all about knowing how to manage the fight. It's difficult yes, but is doable consistently on both vet and vet hm with a group who knows the encounter.

Jeremy

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

I believe DPS Checks are poorly-designed mechanics as well.

It's just a cheap and unimaginative way to create the illusion of challenge - when really all it does is favor highly offensive builds at the expense of everything else.

At the heart of what makes an RPG fun is being able to create your own character build that suits your own play style. I understand that there has to be some limitations in this regard and competent builds should be required. But the problem with this game's Veteran DLC dungeons (and in particular this one) is that they are overly restrictive and require highly specialized builds with very little room for customization.

I like the new sets. They are interesting and fun to use. But I was disappointed in these new dungeons because they rely far too heavily on DPS checks and instant death trial and error mechanics. In short: they represent the worst kind of gimmicky game play and - as this OP discovered - are more annoying and frustrating than they are actually fun.

I am guessing it was the same developers who comprised VMA who were responsible for these as they feel very similar - which is to say shoddy and aggravating and often times more like a round of torture than anything else.

The goal of any competent game developer should be to make his or her game enjoyable to play. That should be first and foremost on their mind. It shouldn't be to murder their players as rapidly and annoyingly as possible in the name of challenge.

When so many people are wanting the option to turn off these dungeons from the random queue there is a problem. I don't mind dying on a video game - but I at least want to have some fun while I'm doing it. I apologize for the length of this post as I did climb onto my soap box a bit.

Jeremy

Eliran wrote: »

Honestly, such a poor design, shameful really.

So many bugs and overlapping effects, disgusting.

This is most likely the hardest boss in ESO history EVER made for melee players, on the edge on unplayable.

And those 1 shot at 0 range from his fire fists on the ground, just disgusting.

Add a god damn delay of 5 seconds between every ability! all of them come ENDLESSLY IN A ROW.

What the hell?!!?!

Did you even try to play it before releasing it?

I've done every single veteran dungeon 0 death, but this? rofl, this is a whole new level of no sense.

Its not even skill based, its purely RNG and luck based.

Bloodroot is considered harder and yet SO WELL FINISHED, how could this thing happen?

Not to mention that the damage he do is WAYYYYYY over exaggerating, its not even maybe, its literally 1 shot.

And not enough all that I said, EVERY EFFECT HAPPENS ALMOST INSTANTLY! 0.5 delay POOF its up 100% full! now add that buggy overlapping of effect.

Further, if you so called want to make those things, fix the god damn servers first! this content is NOT MADE to be done with 100+ MS.

Explain how to every other game in Europe I have hardly 40, yet to ESO 130, are the servers still located in the US or what?

Just shameful.

I agree with you.

This dungeon is too much and needs to be toned down.

When I first did this dungeon on veteran mode it was so over-the-top and ridiculous I considered that it might have been a joke the developers were playing on us.

Artis

Jeremy wrote: »

I believe DPS Checks are poorly-designed mechanics as well.

It's just a cheap and unimaginative way to create the illusion of challenge - when really all it does is favor highly offensive builds at the expense of everything else.

These people...

Listening to these crowd an interesting picture comes up. So DPS checks are cheap. One-shots are cheap. Mechanics that kill you are cheap.

Then what's not cheap? What are fun mechanics that will make the fight fun, engaging, challenging and non trivial? Because everything comes down to one simple rule in the end: deal damage, survive enemies damage and complete certain actions.
DPS checks, one-shots, mechanics are all simply because there are only these 3 things to check. Or do you imagine that we should be just spectators in fights and not actually fight anything? Like, nothing can one-shot us if we don't avoid it or don't do mechanics and we should have as much time as we want = not rewarding players who bothered with optimizing their performance? I don't get it. Then what's not cheap and how would a well-designed fight look?

Cage_Lizardman

I very much prefer the mechanics in vCoS or vWGT over the new dungeons. They are still doable with 20k dd's, they just become harder by giving you more time to screw up.

Both the final bosses in the new dungeons seem to have been designed for 30k+ dd's. There is no way to manage either fight with average dps, besides praying to the RNG.

Larsay

paulsimonps wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

You are a bit caught up on semantics. I thought it would be clear with my explanation that I was referring to a DPS check as an early dungeon boss or mechanic intended to prevent players from wasting their time on content which they can not complete at their current level. A gatekeeper if you will.

That doesn't make it a "poorly-designed mechanic".

So... your issue is in where they place the DPS check. You want it to be a gatekeeper, so that people can fail it early and not "waste" their time with the rest of the dungeon. That's a fair point. But the counter is that it's discouraging if people fail early on (though I guess that discouragement is what you want), and that placing the most difficult content last has the best sense of difficulty progression. I mean, it's natural to expect the last few minutes of a fight to be the most difficult and climatic--that's how it is in a lot of games (and movies ). Back when CoA2 (er, vCoA, as it was called back then) first came out, the Fire Maw was the gatekeeper boss, and people would say, "Once you beat the Fire Maw, you've beaten vCoA". That's not very good difficult progression design, IMO.

Better to have people fail at the last 1% of the entire dungeon than to have them fail at the first or second boss. It's the final part of the final boss. It's supposed to be--and people expect it to be--a difficult challenge to overcome.

The gate keeper boss on CoA2 when it was new was "Urata the Legion" not Fire Maw. Urata was the second boss in the dungeon and had a mechanic which would heal her if your DPS was too low. If you are unfamiliar with the mechanic, it is the same as the first boss in VMA, which is that it summons adds and then absorbs them to heal. Urata to that extent was one of the best bosses of this type, as having a boss that is sitting at 100% health after 5 minutes of DPS makes it very clear to the group what the problem is.

As for Fire Maw, there were two ways of cheesing that boss as I remember. Most people I knew considered the ash titan to be the hardest boss in the dungeon. Though the groups I was in usually had a harder time on the final boss. I suspect this was due to the fact that as a PvP guild we were all vampires, which back then meant 50% more damage from fire.

Most of your argument seems to rely on 1) there being some sort of entertainment value to sitting in a dungeon redoing the same fight over and over again, and/or 2) a climax which is skipped entirely has an equal entertainment value. Your perspective certainly is interesting, I wasn't feeling any excitement about the fight 2 dozen hours in and I'm not sure the group posted in the video that skipped the mechanic entirely due to having an absurd amount of group dps felt like the fight had become 'climatic'.

Assuming you are being honest in that you felt that this mechanic in particular was an important climax to the fight. It seems that logically there exists some narrow band of DPS where you both get some sort of excitement out of this mechanic without making the fight impossible. I can only assume that this narrow band just happens to be the level you play at.

My problem with the mechanic is that it doesn't even activate for the players who are most likely to find some entertainment value in the difficulty. Those who were already struggling get doubled down on, seeing the difficultly level spike to levels that the supposed elites never see. It is as if high dps somehow translates into an 'easy mode' button, but why? I can only assume that someone at ZOS didn't actually think it through, hence my 'poorly designed' comment. If ZOS truly intends the answer to this fight to be 'more dps', then they need to add a gatekeeper early in the dungeon to indicate to players the minimum amount of DPS their group needs. If instead they intend the dungeon to be completable in the way my group did -- swamped in chaos and frustrated, then they should probably give the top-end players the same -- entertainment.

Wait was that legit a thing back then? That people couldn't get past the 2nd boss?



I didn't know for the longest time that her adds would heal her cause they died almost instantly.

This made me LoL Paul... I actually still didn't know they healed her, or what the adds actually did!

SelfTherapy

Did all the challenges for the skin with 3 dps and a tank, 1 magblade and 2 sorcs with twilight for the emergency heals. Actually pretty freaking easy.

Syrusthevirus187

SelfTherapy wrote: »

Did all the challenges for the skin with 3 dps and a tank, 1 magblade and 2 sorcs with twilight for the emergency heals. Actually pretty freaking easy.

Yep. Healers are for trials.

BuddyAces

paulsimonps wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Takuto wrote: »

The problem with Falkreath is that it does not have a DPS check, instead it has a poorly designed mechanic which can be skipped entirely by high DPS groups.

Um, that's exactly what a DPS check is... well, except for the "poorly-designed" part.

It's a mechanic that's designed to wipe you, and the way you survive that mechanic is to deal high enough DPS that you don't experience the mechanic. That's the very definition of a DPS check. You don't like this mechanic, so instead of acknowledging it as a DPS check, you simply call it a "poorly-designed mechanic", but that doesn't change that it is the very definition of a DPS check/race.

So, no, it's not a broken or "poorly-designed" mechanic. That's exactly the intended design: It raises the stakes at the end and challenges you do hold the line, and if you can't and the atronachs build up, things are supposed to spiral out of control into a wipe. That's not an oversight of design--that's just the intent.

What ZOS has been doing recently is placing more and more emphasis on the end of boss fights. It's not just the final boss of Falkreath. But also the final boss of Bloodroot, three of the five bosses in vHoF, and the new vAS trial--where much of the fight is pretty calm and manageable, and then the real challenge of the fight is when all hell breaks loose at the end and players are put to the test to see if they can hold everything together. And one might argue that loading all of the difficulty at the tail end of the fight is a poor design choice (on the upside, it does prevent people from wiping at the start and getting discouraged). But if one accepts that it's valid to shift the difficulty of a fight from the beginning to the end, then there is nothing about that boss fight's execute that's "poorly designed". Yes, it's mayhem. Yes, you need high DPS to keep that mayhem under control. And yes, that's the whole point.

You are a bit caught up on semantics. I thought it would be clear with my explanation that I was referring to a DPS check as an early dungeon boss or mechanic intended to prevent players from wasting their time on content which they can not complete at their current level. A gatekeeper if you will.

That doesn't make it a "poorly-designed mechanic".

So... your issue is in where they place the DPS check. You want it to be a gatekeeper, so that people can fail it early and not "waste" their time with the rest of the dungeon. That's a fair point. But the counter is that it's discouraging if people fail early on (though I guess that discouragement is what you want), and that placing the most difficult content last has the best sense of difficulty progression. I mean, it's natural to expect the last few minutes of a fight to be the most difficult and climatic--that's how it is in a lot of games (and movies ). Back when CoA2 (er, vCoA, as it was called back then) first came out, the Fire Maw was the gatekeeper boss, and people would say, "Once you beat the Fire Maw, you've beaten vCoA". That's not very good difficult progression design, IMO.

Better to have people fail at the last 1% of the entire dungeon than to have them fail at the first or second boss. It's the final part of the final boss. It's supposed to be--and people expect it to be--a difficult challenge to overcome.

The gate keeper boss on CoA2 when it was new was "Urata the Legion" not Fire Maw. Urata was the second boss in the dungeon and had a mechanic which would heal her if your DPS was too low. If you are unfamiliar with the mechanic, it is the same as the first boss in VMA, which is that it summons adds and then absorbs them to heal. Urata to that extent was one of the best bosses of this type, as having a boss that is sitting at 100% health after 5 minutes of DPS makes it very clear to the group what the problem is.

As for Fire Maw, there were two ways of cheesing that boss as I remember. Most people I knew considered the ash titan to be the hardest boss in the dungeon. Though the groups I was in usually had a harder time on the final boss. I suspect this was due to the fact that as a PvP guild we were all vampires, which back then meant 50% more damage from fire.

Most of your argument seems to rely on 1) there being some sort of entertainment value to sitting in a dungeon redoing the same fight over and over again, and/or 2) a climax which is skipped entirely has an equal entertainment value. Your perspective certainly is interesting, I wasn't feeling any excitement about the fight 2 dozen hours in and I'm not sure the group posted in the video that skipped the mechanic entirely due to having an absurd amount of group dps felt like the fight had become 'climatic'.

Assuming you are being honest in that you felt that this mechanic in particular was an important climax to the fight. It seems that logically there exists some narrow band of DPS where you both get some sort of excitement out of this mechanic without making the fight impossible. I can only assume that this narrow band just happens to be the level you play at.

My problem with the mechanic is that it doesn't even activate for the players who are most likely to find some entertainment value in the difficulty. Those who were already struggling get doubled down on, seeing the difficultly level spike to levels that the supposed elites never see. It is as if high dps somehow translates into an 'easy mode' button, but why? I can only assume that someone at ZOS didn't actually think it through, hence my 'poorly designed' comment. If ZOS truly intends the answer to this fight to be 'more dps', then they need to add a gatekeeper early in the dungeon to indicate to players the minimum amount of DPS their group needs. If instead they intend the dungeon to be completable in the way my group did -- swamped in chaos and frustrated, then they should probably give the top-end players the same -- entertainment.

Wait was that legit a thing back then? That people couldn't get past the 2nd boss?



I didn't know for the longest time that her adds would heal her cause they died almost instantly.

I like to pug dungeons on my tank. I can grab guildies and blow through em all but it's fun pugging. You can get some good laughs. Better yet, you can see where the skill level is for the majority of the player base.

The dps check in vcoa2 is still there. I seen it happen the other day when it was a pledge. Went through 3 sets of diff DDs. THREE. Could not pass it. Had to call in guildies.

FG2 boss that pins a player down...have had groups fail that also. Wife was in a group that would not even attempt fg1 hm cuz it was too hard.

Some of these dungeons are hard for alot of people. I'm not advocating to make things harder or easier, just reminding folks who only run with their guildies that steamroll everything that not everyone in the game is as good as the next guy. It's what ZOS keeps in mind when designing encounters.

Mazbt

I've done it on a melee magplar (which means beam and staff heavy attacks for half the fight lol)...everyone needs to really concentrate and be on the ball with this fight. Someone calling things like in, out, grovel, add, burn boss,w/e helps a lot too.

regime211

Eliran wrote: »

Honestly, such a poor design, shameful really.

So many bugs and overlapping effects, disgusting.

This is most likely the hardest boss in ESO history EVER made for melee players, on the edge on unplayable.

And those 1 shot at 0 range from his fire fists on the ground, just disgusting.

Add a god damn delay of 5 seconds between every ability! all of them come ENDLESSLY IN A ROW.

What the hell?!!?!

Did you even try to play it before releasing it?

I've done every single veteran dungeon 0 death, but this? rofl, this is a whole new level of no sense.

Its not even skill based, its purely RNG and luck based.

Bloodroot is considered harder and yet SO WELL FINISHED, how could this thing happen?

Not to mention that the damage he do is WAYYYYYY over exaggerating, its not even maybe, its literally 1 shot.

And not enough all that I said, EVERY EFFECT HAPPENS ALMOST INSTANTLY! 0.5 delay POOF its up 100% full! now add that buggy overlapping of effect.

Further, if you so called want to make those things, fix the god damn servers first! this content is NOT MADE to be done with 100+ MS.

Explain how to every other game in Europe I have hardly 40, yet to ESO 130, are the servers still located in the US or what?

Just shameful.

Get good then

Mop_Almighty

The dungeons aren't designed for every person that has the dlc to be able to be able to complete them on vet or hard mode, they are made for the the endish-endgame pve players that study mechanics and push there dps as high as possible

Mop_Almighty

Cage_Lizardman wrote: »

I very much prefer the mechanics in vCoS or vWGT over the new dungeons. They are still doable with 20k dd's, they just become harder by giving you more time to screw up.

Both the final bosses in the new dungeons seem to have been designed for 30k+ dd's. There is no way to manage either fight with average dps, besides praying to the RNG.

You can't pray to rng on the final boss, he shouts at a certain amount of health and he does all of his attacking in a rotation, as long as you burn adds quickly and when starts putting on his shield go all out on the dps you'll do it no problem

Kanar

Jeremy wrote: »

At the heart of what makes an RPG fun is being able to create your own character build that suits your own play style. I understand that there has to be some limitations in this regard and competent builds should be required. But the problem with this game's Veteran DLC dungeons (and in particular this one) is that they are overly restrictive and require highly specialized builds with very little room for customization.

I like the new sets. They are interesting and fun to use. But I was disappointed in these new dungeons because they rely far too heavily on DPS checks and instant death trial and error mechanics. In short: they represent the worst kind of gimmicky game play and - as this OP discovered - are more annoying and frustrating than they are actually fun.

I am guessing it was the same developers who comprised VMA who were responsible for these as they feel very similar - which is to say shoddy and aggravating and often times more like a round of torture than anything else.

Regarding non-minmaxed builds, the other night I completed vFH hm; myself and the other dd are stamDKs using 2h/bow. I ended up going DW for final boss (blade cloak), but neither of us were particularly min maxed, I think the other stamdk was PvP focused. Of course we both used the core dk skill rotation because it's obvious and there's no other choices for a dk. I wouldn't think even more experimental builds should be capable of vet hm.

Regarding the vMA comment: looks to me like you just don't like a challenge. I love vMA because it gives a challenge where you only rely on yourself, no healer or tank to keep you alive. The mechanics are not shoddy, and it's only frustrating if you let yourself get frustrated. Lighten up a bit and take it as a personal challenge where you learn from each death. In fact being more relaxed is a huge help; when you're all tensed up you make more mistakes.

Drummerx04

Artis wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

I believe DPS Checks are poorly-designed mechanics as well.

It's just a cheap and unimaginative way to create the illusion of challenge - when really all it does is favor highly offensive builds at the expense of everything else.

These people...

Listening to these crowd an interesting picture comes up. So DPS checks are cheap. One-shots are cheap. Mechanics that kill you are cheap.

Then what's not cheap? What are fun mechanics that will make the fight fun, engaging, challenging and non trivial? Because everything comes down to one simple rule in the end: deal damage, survive enemies damage and complete certain actions.
DPS checks, one-shots, mechanics are all simply because there are only these 3 things to check. Or do you imagine that we should be just spectators in fights and not actually fight anything? Like, nothing can one-shot us if we don't avoid it or don't do mechanics and we should have as much time as we want = not rewarding players who bothered with optimizing their performance? I don't get it. Then what's not cheap and how would a well-designed fight look?

This is a pretty good point. Just because something can kill you doesn't make it cheap, it makes it threatening and it punishes mistakes.

Actual cheap mechanics are those that rapidly drain resources and therefore indirectly kill you because you just can't use abilities any more.

Probably the best examples are:

1. Boss 2 in HoF: conduits and the boss VERY rapidly drain magicka. You can lose well over 20k magicka in seconds.
2. Final boss totems in RoM: The totems if left alive too long will drain health, mag, and stamina from the entire group without end.
3. The penultimate boss in FG2: The AoE mag drain takes your from 100% mag to 0% mag in one channel, and he does it unavoidably and every 20-30 seconds or so. The boss is otherwise a complete joke and deals almost no damage, so it just draws out an uninteresting fight.

Of course the solution to most of these is to just kill the thing faster, but sometimes you just can't avoid getting hit by a drain before killing the source and it's lame.